Part 34 (2/2)
”Strange,” I said, ”that they have from the first been so little of that opinion, that every attempt to enforce it, for the last three hundred years, has ended either in persecution or revolution.”
”Ah! that was all those vile puritans' fault. They wouldn't give the Church a chance of showing her powers.”
”What! not when she had it all her own way, during the whole eighteenth century?”
”Ah! but things are very different now. The clergy are awakened now to the real beauty of the Catholic machinery; and you have no notion how much is doing in church-building and schools, and societies of every sort and kind.
It is quite incredible what is being done now for the lower orders by the Church.”
”I believe,” I said, ”that the clergy are exceedingly improved; and I believe, too, that the men to whom they owe all their improvement are the Wesleys and Whitfields--in short, the very men whom they drove one by one out of the Church, from persecution or disgust. And I do think it strange, that if so much is doing for the lower cla.s.ses, the working men, who form the ma.s.s of the lower cla.s.ses, are just those who scarcely feel the effects of it; while the churches seem to be filled with children, and rich and respectable, to the almost entire exclusion of the adult lower cla.s.ses. A strange religion this!” I went on, ”and, to judge by its effects, a very different one from that preached in Judea 1800 years ago, if we are to believe the Gospel story.”
”What on earth do you mean? Is not the Church of England the very purest form of Apostolic Christianity?”
”It may be--and so may the other sects. But, somehow, in Judea, it was the publicans and harlots who pressed into the kingdom of heaven; and it was the common people who heard Christ gladly. Christianity, then, was a movement in the hearts of the lower order. But now, my dear fellow, you rich, who used to be told, in St. James's time, to weep and howl, have turned the tables upon us poor. It is _you_ who are talking, all day long, of converting _us_. Look at any place of wors.h.i.+p you like, orthodox and heretical.--Who fill the pews?--the outcast and the reprobate? No! the Pharisees and the covetous, who used to deride Christ, fill His churches, and say still, 'This people, these ma.s.ses, who know not the Gospel are accursed.' And the universal feeling, as far as I can judge, seems to be, not 'how hardly shall they who have,' but how hardly shall they who have _not_, 'riches, enter into the kingdom of heaven!'”
”Upon my word,” said he, laughing, ”I did not give you credit for so much eloquence: you seem to have studied the Bible to some purpose, too. I didn't think that so much Radicalism could be squeezed out of a few texts of Scripture. It's quite a new light to me. I'll just mark that card, and play it when I get a convenient opportunity. It may be a winning one in these democratic times.”
And he did play it, as I heard hereafter; but at present he seemed to think that the less that was said further on clerical subjects the better, and commenced quizzing the people whom we pa.s.sed, humorously and neatly enough; while I walked on in silence, and thought of Mr. Bye-Ends, in the ”Pilgrim's Progress.” And yet I believe the man was really in earnest. He was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what was right would pay him. G.o.d shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own heart, much less in that of another?
The dean was not at home that day, having left town on business. George nodded familiarly to the footman who opened the door.
”You'll mind and send me word the moment your master comes home--mind now!”
The fellow promised obedience, and we walked away.
”You seem to be very intimate here,” said I, ”with all parties?”
”Oh! footmen are useful animals--a half-sovereign now and then is not altogether thrown away upon them. But as for the higher powers, it is very easy to make oneself at home in the dean's study, but not so much so as to get a footing in the drawing-room above. I suspect he keeps a precious sharp eye upon the fair Miss Lillian.”
”But,” I asked, as a jealous pang shot through my heart, ”how did you contrive to get this same footing at all? When I met you at Cambridge, you seemed already well acquainted with these people.”
”How?--how does a hound get a footing on a cold scent? By working and casting about and about, and drawing on it inch by inch, as I drew on them for years, my boy; and cold enough the scent was. You recollect that day at the Dulwich Gallery? I tried to see the arms on the carriage, but there were none; so that c.o.c.k wouldn't fight.”
”The arms! I should never have thought of such a plan.”
”Dare say you wouldn't. Then I harked back to the doorkeeper, while you were St. Sebastianizing. He didn't know their names, or didn't choose to show me their ticket, on which it ought to have been; so I went to one of the fellows whom I knew, and got him to find out. There comes out the value of money--for money makes acquaintances. Well, I found who they were.--Then I saw no chance of getting at them. But for the rest of that year at Cambridge, I beat every bush in the university, to find some one who knew them; and as fortune favours the brave, at last I hit off this Lord Lynedale; and he, of course, was the ace of trumps--a fine catch in himself, and a double catch because he was going to marry the cousin. So I made a dead set at him; and tight work I had to nab him, I can tell you, for he was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal, and seen life. But every man has his weak side; and I found his was a sort of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me well enough, for I was always a deuce of a radical myself; so I stuck to him like a leech, and stood all his temper, and his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions of his, that made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to; but I stood it, and here I am.”
”And what on earth induced you to stoop to all this--” meanness I was on the point of saying. ”Surely you are in no want of money--your father could buy you a good living to-morrow.”
”And he will, but not the one I want; and he could not buy me reputation, power, rank, do you see, Alton, my genius? And what's more, he couldn't buy me a certain little t.i.t-bit, a jewel, worth a Jew's eye and a half, Alton, that I set my heart on from the first moment I set my eye on it.”
My heart beat fast and fierce, but he ran on--
”Do you think I'd have eaten all this dirt if it hadn't lain in my way to her? Eat dirt! I'd drink blood, Alton--though I don't often deal in strong words--if it lay in that road. I never set my heart on a thing yet, that I didn't get it at last by fair means or foul--and I'll get her! I don't care for her money, though that's a pretty plum. Upon my life, I don't. I wors.h.i.+p her, limbs and eyes. I wors.h.i.+p the very ground she treads on. She's a duck and a darling,” said he, smacking his lips like an Ogre over his prey, ”and I'll have her before I've done, so help me--”
”Whom do you mean?” I stammered out.
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